The companies have teamed up to make moving motion graphics and animation projects between the two applications easier.

Adobe and Maxon have created a 'strategic alliance' to collaborate and engineer a pipeline between After Effects and Cinema 4D to make moving projects between the two applications easier.

In a blog post, Steve Forde, senior product manager for After Effects at Adobe, said that currently "After Effects works really well with Cinema 4D, [and] Cinema 4D works really well with After Effects", but that "at a fundamental level, [they] don’t really talk to each other in a way that’s super productive."

"I wish I could go into more detail right now – but stay tuned. This area is about to get very exciting."

Currently, it's relatively easy to export scenes from Cinema 4D into After Effects as a series of passes inside an After Effect composition (.aec), but 'round-trip' integration when you can go backwards and forwards between the apps when working on a project – as with After Effects and Premiere Pro – isn't possible. Below is an example of the current workflow, which was created by Jean Pichot. Jean has created a series of tutorials for Cinema 4D and After Effects based on the project, the first of which can be found in our April 2013 issue, which is out on March 21, 2013.